Baton Rouge Chief of Police Carl Dabadie had spoken almost a week ago about the criticism of his department's decision to work protests dressed in full riot gear. At that time he suggested in his comments that police had received a credible threat against the lives of officers.

We are up against a force that is not playing by the rules. They haven’t played by the rules. They didn’t play by the rules in Dallas, and they didn’t play by the rules here.

Peaceful people and reasonable minds might not understand the helmets and riot gear. Unfortunately officers of law enforcement do not always encounter people of peace and reasonable mind. Sometimes their encounters are with those whose mission is to simply take the life of an officer.

In discussing the events of Sunday during the Monday press conference, Dabadie explained the mission of peace officers in a situations such as the one that occurred in Baton Rouge.

They went to the fire. They didn’t run. They didn’t go the other direction. They didn’t blow it off. They went straight to it, and I could not be more proud of these officers.

Because of their actions and the actions of others involved in ending the incident the loss of life was kept to a minimum.

That shot that our SWAT team made was a hell of a shot, but it had to be made. We had to neutralize the threat right there. We could not let it go any further.

Dabadie was speaking of the long range shot that was fired by a police sharp shooter that took the life of the gunman. Dabadie speculated in his comments to the Louisiana Radio Network that had this shooter not been taken out by this tactic he could have made his way to police headquarters where even more lives could have been lost.